


The Gates

by xpityx



Series: Witcher Fics [7]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-15 10:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20864978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Geralt looked back at the saplings and for a moment two great trees stood in their place, their crowns high above the canopy and their trunks so thick that he couldn’t see beyond them. Then he blinked and they were once again saplings: tender and bowing in the breeze.He believed then, as he hadn’t believed before, and he realised the terror of the thing he was about to do—of the sacrifices he would have to make.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Merulanoir](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/merulanoir/pseuds/merulanoir) for not only beta'ing this but letting me invite myself over to their apartment and eat their food while they did so <3
> 
> I also PROMISE that this has a happy ending, OK? OK.

“What is this sleep which holds you now?

You are lost in the dark and cannot hear me.”

_ Tablet 8, The Epic of Gilgamesh _

“This is the really real world: there ain’t no coming back.” 

_ The Crow _

**Prologue**

Every gate, every house, almost every wall was draped in black cloth. 

People swarmed the streets, spilling out of the taverns and boarding houses while guards tried in vain to keep the thoroughfares clear. The men wore black armbands and the women wore veils and even the children, running barefoot between the market stalls, had black scraps sewn to their vests. Some enterprising souls were selling black-dyed flowers, and others were demonstrating their skills as professional mourners: tearing at their hair and crying as onlookers threw them the odd coin.

Geralt rode past all of it, the sounds and sights of the Capital seeming far away as he made his way steadily through the crowds to the palace. Roach slowed to a crawl once they reached the main gates, the sheer number of people making it difficult to forge a path without causing injury. Eventually one of the guards recognised him and called down for reinforcements to clear the way. 

He handed Roach off to the first stable girl he saw and was escorted to a part of the Palace he had never been to before, walking down corridor after corridor of grim-faced servants hurrying to and fro. Geralt wondered where Mererid was in all of this, and then they were at their destination. 

He thought for a moment that Ciri had been warned of his arrival and had hurried to the chapel to meet him, but on second glance he could tell that she had been sat in the pew for some time. She glanced up at him and gave him a wan smile, tilting her head towards to the richly draped casket in front of her, as if giving him permission to pay his respects before greeting her.

Geralt stepped up to the altar but couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing: just an impression of heavily embroidered gold and black cloth, sharp cheekbones and salt and pepper hair. And then reality seemed to fall in from where it had disappeared to the first time he had heard the news, four days ago. He put his hands flat on the plinth where Emhyr’s casket sat and bowed his head. 

Ciri came up and put her hands on his shoulders from behind, turning him around. He looked at her and whatever showed on his face caused her to pull his head down to her shoulder and wrap him in her arms. 

“I hadn’t believed it,” he said, hoarsely, “even when I saw the city in mourning, I hadn’t believed.” 

“How?” he added, as if the way of it would make the truth more real.

“Come, sit with me,” Ciri said, and they sat on the cold stone of the pew together. Some hundred candles glittered behind the casket, but they were too far away to give off any heat. Geralt absently pulled his own jacket over Ciri’s shoulders as she leaned into his side. 

“No-one could have predicted it. It wasn’t planned as far as we can tell. A woman, a half-elf, who lost her husband to the Tens rebellion. She was visiting her daughter here and was closeby when we were moving from the carriage to Lord Vayer’s residence. She had a clear shot and she took it.”

Geralt tightened his arm around Ciri. To think that she too had come so close to death. 

“A crossbow?” He suggested.

“No,” Ciri shook her head, “you can’t carry a crossbow within the city limits. Even swords must be under a certain size and weight. She had a throwing knife. He took it in the throat.” She touched a place on her own throat, a inch from her artery. It wouldn’t have been instant, but close enough to have made little difference even if a mage had been present. 

“Was he able to say anything?” Geralt asked, not sure what he was looking for. Some sense that Emhyr had seen this coming, that there was some plan—some greater purpose that only he could have shown them. 

Ciri took a breath, then another. Geralt held her hand as she fought a hard battle against her emotions so that she could pass on Emhyr’s last words.

“He reached out to me and said, ‘my daughter’.” 

**Part I**

Geralt had been in a small town a three hour ride from Glaęn when he’d heard the news. He had gone to the local magistrate to be paid when the conversation of two guards outside caught his attention. He tuned out the magistrate, who was making some excuse for only paying half the agreed fee, and listened in on the conversation that was happening in the next room.

“I heard they’ll crown the Princess next week.”

“She’ll have to marry,” said a second voice.

“I’d have her, even with that great scar of hers,” said the first.

Gerat had taken the purse from the Magistrate without looking and tucked it into his belt, striding out of the room and turning the first speaker to face him with a hand on his arm.

“Which Princess?” He’d asked, unaware of how tightly he held the other man.

“The—the Crown Princess, Master Witcher, Cirilla var Emreis.” 

“Did Emhyr abdicate?” Geralt demanded.

“No, he was killed, couple of days ago: they say it were assassins—” 

Geralt hadn’t heard any more. He’d let go of the guard and gone to get Roach. A herald had met him on his way to the Capital to give him the news; Ciri must have sent out dozens of riders to find him. 

Now that he was here he was at a loss as to what he was supposed to do. He sat with Ciri most mornings, wearing a hastily tailored black doublet that an under-chamberlain had produced on his first morning. Ciri spent her time greeting heads of state, innumerable Lords and Ladies, and heads of Houses as they arrived for the funeral. She accepted their condolences with grace, but Geralt found himself getting angrier and angrier as each day wore on: these people hadn’t known Emhyr, they hadn’t played gwent with him into the early hours of the morning, they hadn’t seen him desperate for his daughter to come back to him. They had never heard him laugh. 

“Geralt,” Ciri said, as he stood to return to his rooms. It was the fourth evening of his stay and the funeral was to be held tomorrow. “Thank you, for staying. I know you hate the High Houses.”

He folded her into a hug, unsure how to reply. It was not true that there was nowhere else he wanted to be, it was more that he _ had _ to be there, that he owed it to Emhyr somehow to see this through. Which was an odd thought as he hadn’t even thought of him as a friend—not really—and Emhyr most likely didn’t know the meaning of the word. Hadn’t, _ hadn’t _ known the meaning of the word. 

He pulled back from Ciri and tried to pull his expression into something supportive.

She squeezed his forearms before letting go.

“Try to get some sleep,” she said.

“You too.”

He didn’t sleep, of course. He tried to meditate but he kept thinking back to the first time he’d met Emhyr, of the look of raw horror on his face when he’d been exposed as cursed. He wasn’t sure why that was the image that rose to mind, instead of the calm, collected man he had become. 

Too soon the weak morning light crept into his chambers. He remained in a light trance as the servants brought in a bath and filled it with herbs and steaming hot water. He made himself strip and get in before it cooled, quickly scrubbing himself clean instead of enjoying the heat as he usually did. He had only just gotten out when Mererid appeared in his rooms with his usual light-footed tread.

“Some clothes for you, Master Witcher,” he said, giving a barely-there bow before placing them carefully on a chair. 

Geralt had frozen, his towel half wrapped around his hips. Mererid gave his small nod again, then turned to go.

“Wait,” Geralt said, not sure what words were crowded behind that one in his throat.

Mererid turned back to him, his face the dour mask it always was.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Geralt finally offered. 

Mererid didn’t reply and no trace of grief showed on his face, but he stood a little straighter and bowed a little deeper as he left. There was nothing to do then but put on the shirt and doublet, its black sleeves shot through with golden thread. Geralt was certain he’d never worn anything quite so heavy in his life. It weighed nearly the same as his armor. 

Apart from Ciri and her immediate advisers, the whole procession was to walk to the great temple of the Great Sun. Geralt had walked the route already, first checking for possible places where an assassin could get a clear shot at Ciri in her carriage, and then again in an attempt to make it seem more real, that he was walking the last journey the Emhyr would ever make. 

It had somehow never occurred to him that he would be in the carriage with Ciri. She’d also decided to buck tradition and had arranged for another carriage for the rest of the Heads of State and Houses, leaving him and Ciri alone. He wasn’t sure why she’d done it—the advisor who’d explained the rituals of state funerals to him had been very firm on the importance of the details—but he didn't ask. He was half-afraid that it was for him, that one of her first decrees as Empress of the North and South had been to break with tradition so Geralt didn't have to make small talk with a load of stuck-up pissants. Emhyr would have been furious.

He put a hand over his eyes, just for a moment.

“Geralt?” Ciri asked, moving to sit next to him.

“I’m fine,” he said and, because she was Ciri, because she was kind, she let him have his lie. 

The world continued to turn. 

He stayed a six-month with Ciri, until the leaves changed colour and the evenings grew dark enough to match his mood. Ciri had her own study and chambers so Emhyr’s rooms remained untouched. Geralt sat in them sometimes, in the chair he had sat in on the handful of occasions he and Emhyr had spent time together. 

Emhyr had touched him only twice in their entire acquaintance. The first time he’d gripped the top of his arm when he’d come with Ciri back to the Capital. He’d said nothing, but he’d nodded at Geralt with what he’d thought was thanks. The second time had been one of the last times Geralt had seen him. They had been playing cards and drinking. Emhyr hadn’t been drunk, nothing so indecorous as that, but he had softened a little, one side of his mouth in a permanent uptick as he systematically destroyed Geralt at gwent, then at some card game of their own devising. 

Emhyr had suggested another round but Geralt, for some reason he couldn’t now remember, had chosen his bed instead. Emhyr had walked with him to the door of his rooms, putting a hand on his shoulder as he did so. He’d said something, possibly _ sleep well _or something equally innocuous, but the exact shape of the words were lost to time. Geralt spent many hours in that six-month thinking about those words and what they might have been. About why he had refused the other game, why he had chosen his cold bed instead of the curve of Emhyr’s smile and the clever turnings of his mind. 

He knew Ciri was worried about him. She had started suggesting contracts that might interest him. He could feel the pull of the Path, but he felt that if he could just remember what Emhyr had said to him that night then he could move on, he could put this all behind him as he had with all those he had buried before.

As winter set in he returned to Corvo Bianco. He promised Ciri to come again by spring at the latest. The road to Toussaint was well maintained and three days into his ride he came across a gang of workers replacing stones that had worn away. The sight of such a small part of the workings of the Empire shocked him more than anything else had. More than the wailing of the mourners at the funeral, more than the sight of Emhyr in his casket; silent and still. This, these few people repairing a road, as if the Emperor still lived, as if the Empire continued in his absence. It did of course, it was continuing under the able guidance of Ciri, who had brought the great Houses to heel even as she grieved for her father. 

Geralt turned Roach off the road with its smooth and steady stones and followed a path at random that lead into the farmland beyond. He had no destination in mind, only the thought that if he returned to Corvo Bianco then he would be accepting somehow that Emhyr was gone, that he could return to his home, to his life, while Emhyr rotted in the earth. 

Roach must have known the way though, as after three days of wandering aimlessly across the continent they arrived at Ina, where Dandelion and Zoltan owned a small inn. They welcomed him with joy when he walked into the main room, the heat and light of the fire making him wince a little. He could see Dandelion casting Zoltan nervous looks as he sat and ate the stew a half-elf had placed in front of him with little grace. He was ravenous, he found, and when he finished Dandelion signalled for another. They spoke quietly to each other as Geralt ate, leaving him to his silence. 

They drank together as they caught him up on the highs and lows of business ownership: mostly lows if Dandelion was to be believed. He told a few stories of some scrapes his songs had saved them from, Zoltan firmly shaking his head in the background every so often, which meant that any saving had had more to do with the dwarf’s strong arm than Dandelion’s musical abilities.

“I’m going to find him,” Geralt announced just as Dandelion was preparing to start another tale. 

His friends exchanged a worried glance. 

“He’s dead, Geralt, where would you look?” Zoltan asked, his deep voice gentle. 

“I know he’s dead.”

“It’s a myth,” Zoltan pointed out, and Dandelion gasped.

“Surely you’re not talking of journeying to the underworld?”

Geralt nodded, “I am, and I know who to ask how to get there.”

Zoltan frowned, but Dandelion threw back the rest of his drink and placed his glass back on the table with rather more force than necessary.

“I will go with you,” he stated, still staring at where his hand gripped his glass.

Geralt smiled, but when Dandelion finally looked up and caught his eye he jumped to his feet.

“You think I wouldn’t! That I’m only giving you some pretty words!”

“No.” Geralt put out his hands in supplication. “No Dandelion, I know you would come with me, and I love you dearly for it, but I…” He shook his head, “I must go alone. The legends are clear about that much at least.”

Dandelion sank back into his seat, where he stole the last of Zoltan’s pint and downed it.

“Hey!”

“Stop complaining, you own an inn,” Dandelion pointed out.

They spoke of other things then: troubles they had found, together or apart, and arguing good-naturedly over who had been at fault for which. But when Geralt woke up the next morning, his resolve to find Emhyr remained.

The first elf he went to refused to even acknowledge that such a place existed; the second one looked at him with sympathy but wouldn’t let him in. 

“You should perhaps take up drinking, just until you feel better of course,” he advised, just before shutting the door in Geralt’s face.

“Do you know how much it costs to get a Witcher drunk?” he asked the door. 

By the time he reached the small network of homes carved into the Blue Mountains he was beginning to wonder if perhaps Zoltan had been right to be skeptical. Even if he were able to find anyone who knew about the way to the Underworld, he was unlikely to convince them to share that knowledge with him. After all, since when had sharing anything with humans done elves any good?

The elves who lived in the caves carved into the rock were descended from scholars and artisans who had survived the initial pogroms. There were only a handful of them living there now, but if anyone knew anything about the ancient mysteries of the world it would be them. He’d gotten lucky in a village a few miles away where he’d been informed of the name of one of the scholars who lived nearby.

After first convincing a young elf that shooting him would be a terrible idea, then convincing him that is eyes were supposed to look like that and no, he wasn’t cursed, the elf took him to a small door set back into the crumbling cliff. He knocked and he and the elf waited in slightly awkward silence while a series of thumps and curses sounded from the other side of the door. 

Finally the door opened to reveal a tall, wide-shouldered elf, who stood in a scene of utter disorder. 

“Yes?” she snapped. 

The guard leant away from Geralt a little, as if to make clear that it had been the Witcher who had done the knocking.

“Sílnaria Mimir?”

“That’s me,” she confirmed, stepping back a little from the door. “Well, are you coming in or not? You’re letting the air out!”

His escort made some gesture that seemed to indicate he had suddenly thought of twenty things he would rather do than take the invitation, but Geralt stepped past the elf and into the low dwelling. 

It was chaos: books and furniture huddled together between scattered pathways that lead through the wreckage further into the cave. There were plates balanced on top of books, and books balanced on top of plates. What windows there were were crowded with plants, and those that weren’t dead gave the light an underwater quality: green and otherworldly.

“Ah!” she said, studying Geralt, “you have that look.”

“What look?”

“The look of someone who is not going to go away just because I tell them to.”

Geralt nodded, then sat himself down on the nearest book pile to underscore the point. 

“My name is Geralt of Rivia,” he said once she had closed the door.

“Just Sílna will do for me,” she replied, moving some books so she could sit down opposite him. “What particular type of idiocy do you need help with?”

“I need to go to the Land of the Dead.” 

She gave her blessing for him to clear a part of the floor to sleep on and directed him to the most likely pile of books. For two days he did nothing but read and and meditate. Sílna seemed to approve of his dedication to his studies, occasionally nudging him towards a better text, or insisting he go down to the village to get them both bread and cheese for their dinner. 

“Don’t you get rats?” Geralt asked on the third day, surveying the disorder.

“No,” Sílna said, without looking up from her book, “the cockroaches eat them.” 

Geralt promptly picked up his feet and placed them on a nearby stool.

_ There are five Gates between you and the dead, _ Sílna had told him that first day. _ Wood, Iron, Dirt, Sand and Ivory. The first only takes courage to walk through, but with each you must give up something in order to pass. _

This much of the law was well-known, but he needed to know what the later Guardians might take, and how to find the path to the dead.

_ The Iron Gate is sharp and unforgiving, and requires a physical sacrifice to walk through. It is the Gate that we should know most about, as that is the Gate at which most lose their nerve, but who wants to tell stories of some sorry folk who gave up at the first hurdle? So there are only a few first hand accounts, I’m afraid. _ She had ticked off fingers as she spoke, _ Dirt takes a learned skill, Sand takes an innate skill, and as no-one has ever returned after passing through the Ivory Gate, your guess is as good as mine. _

Geralt found a posy that had been hand written in High Elvish on the binding of a set of children’s tales:

_ Wood bends for bravery, _

_ But Iron cuts deep. _

_ Dirt takes what is learned, _

_ Knowledge Sand will reap. _

_ Ivory is last _

_ And the soul it will keep. _

“Your _ soul _?” He asked Sílna, who he had discovered was able to follow any line of conversation, even if it was one he had started twelve hours before.

“That part is probably hyperbole.”

“Probably?” 

She gave him a long look. 

“Are you just going to repeat everything I say? I thought the great White Wolf was supposed to be a smart one.”

“You’ve heard of me?” Geralt couldn’t imagine her hearing of anything in this home of hers. 

Sílna made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. 

“Yes, but I didn’t imagine you were stupid enough to go wandering into the Land of the Dead.”

She looked up from her book with a contemplative look that Geralt didn’t much like.

“This impossible task you’ve set yourself doesn’t involve the Emperor does it? The news of his death reached us even here.”

Geralt thought he did a reasonable job of keeping his expression blank, but Sílna’s own softened considerably. 

“Try the _ Danear Compendium _, I seem to remember there was a direct account of the first two Gates in there.” 

Sílna was right: there was very little in the way of what he would call reliable sources. It was Sílna herself who had been the most useful. Once she had realised she had not managed to put him off, she had gone to a room at the back of the cave and come back with a yellowed scroll, held in a stasis spell, that itself had been copied from an even older text. On it were words that would open the first Gate: Wood. It was in a dialect of Elvish unknown to Geralt, so he had to memorize them by rote. The sounds were sharp, unlike any Elvish he had heard before, and Sílna had shivered the first time he’d repeated the whole spell at once. 

“You will not know what was taken, it will be as if it never existed,” she reminded him.

“And are the sacrifices returned if one can find their way back?” Geralt asked.

Sílna gave him a crooked smile. “Now that wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice if you got them back, would it? Those who reached Iron have returned without that which they sacrificed, but further than that I don’t know.” 

“You sure about this?” she added.

Geralt saw Emhyr in his mind’s eye: revealed by his curse; austere and untouchable on his throne; proud of his daughter; his dangerous half-smile; dead and still on the altar.

“I’m sure,” he replied. 

It wasn’t so much that he could ride to a certain point and find the first Gate, it was more that he had to find a place where the Gate _ could _ be, and then call it into being. Sílna had used a lot more words to explain it, but that was what it boiled down to. Geralt wanted to be skeptical, but belief was a powerful force, so he had kept all jokes about only being able to get wood if one had faith to himself. Well, he’d told one, and Sílna had been about as unimpressed as everyone else was when he made puns.

He and Roach wandered the forests at the base of the mountains for two days before he found somewhere that he thought might fit Sílna’s description: two young saplings stood in a small clearing, the span between them that of a man’s outstretched arms. The trees couldn’t have been more than a few seasons old, and Geralt walked a slow lap around them, wondering if this could be a Gate to the Underworld. 

He sat down to wait for sunset with his back against one of the mature trees that stood a little way from the clearing. As he understood it no time would pass on this plane while he was in the Underworld, but he was still hesitant to leave Roach tied to a tree in case he didn’t return. She would make her way home once it was clear he wasn’t coming back. _ If _ it became clear. 

As evening fell he found himself drifting a little. He had not been sleeping well of late, and something about the quiet birdsong felt soothing and safe. He awoke a while later, just as the sun’s last rays were touching the tops of the trees. He sat up with a start, but nothing had changed except Roach had moved onto a new patch of grass to crop, though she did look up long enough to give him a reproachful look.

“Didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he told her. 

He looked back at the saplings and for a moment two great trees stood in their place, their crowns high above the canopy and their trunks so thick that he couldn’t see beyond them. Then he blinked and they were once again saplings: tender and bowing in the breeze. 

Geralt believed then, as he hadn’t believed before, and he realised the terror of the thing he was about to do—of the sacrifices he would have to make. 

He was a Witcher of the School of the Wolf though, and he didn’t hesitate to stand in low dell in front of the Gate to the Underworld and speak the words that Sílna had taught him. They were jagged words, rough words, falling from his lips like the hard pips of a pomegranate. He finished just as the last of the sun slipped from the trees and night crept up to claim the forest.

The whole world shivered for a moment, and Geralt stepped through the Gate. 

**Part II**

The ship that pulled itself out of the water and onto the shore was small compared to the massive vessels of Beauclair Port. Its sides were rusted red and a great, hooded figure had been carved into the prow, the weight of which should have sunk the ship instantly. It was clear that the rules of the world didn’t apply in this place though, and Geralt picked his way carefully over the glass shore to where black waves pulled back and forth, back and forth. As the tide moved the shards of glass rubbed restlessly against each other, creating an endless rasping noise, barely audible over the sound of the crumbling cliffs behind him.

If there was anyone in the boat then they were beyond a Witcher’s sight, and even when Geralt was close enough to lean over the side he saw only an iron bench and more red rust. He straightened up, then spun around and found himself face to face with the figure of the prow, looking at him from under the folds of its iron-carved cloak.

“Come traveller,” the figurehead said in a fell voice, “pay your price.”

Geralt made himself relax his grip on his sword and slide it slowly back into its sheath.

“Forgive my trespass, Guardian,” he said, as Sílna had instructed him.

The Guardian said nothing in reply, but returned to its former position at the prow. As the boat began to slide back down the shore, Geralt put and hand on the jagged side and swung himself in, just as it was pulled back into the tide.

The black water eventually gave way to another glass bay, the grey and white shards of the beach worn both smooth and sharp. They crunched under his boots as he jumped from the boat and he turned to watch it noiselessly flow back into the dark sea until it was gone from sight. Geralt looked around but there was nothing to see: he was in a small bay with the great swath of water stretching out either side into darkness. Behind him the bay shortly gave way to towering trees that stood too straight to be natural. It took him a moment to realise what was missing from the scene: there was no birdsong, no animals calling to each other. There was only the sound of the trees, murmuring quietly together in the breeze.

He knew he should keep moving, but couldn’t help but do a full inventory of himself first, trying to learn what the Iron Gate had taken. He seemed to be whole as he ever been though. Sílna had stressed that he would not know what his sacrifice had been, but he thought that surely the loss of something physical would be obvious. 

It wasn’t, which was odd enough that he wondered if the stories people had carried back with them from the Land of the Dead had been wrong, or embellished somehow. He shrugged to himself: either Sílna and all her learnings had been wrong or the magic that hid his sacrifice from him was powerful enough to fool even a Witcher’s senses. However standing around wasn’t going to reveal the truth of the matter to him so he may as well carry on. 

It was easier said than done, as it turned out. The undergrowth was thick: green shoots covered whole thickets of thorns and deadwood that gave out in a cloud of dust the second he put his feet down; branches reached out to tangle in his hair and tug at his clothes. Worse, the light was fading fast, and his neck ached a little where he kept turning his head to make up for the lack of sight on his left. He put a hand up to the knot of old scars that covered where his eye had been, something about the thought catching his attention for a moment. 

Sudden movement. He didn’t unsheathe his sword but he turned and tensed, ready for whatever had found him among the dark trees. 

It was only a dog though—brown and black and unkempt—padding into a small clearing to Geralt’s right. It looked like the kind of mongrel he had seen in almost every town, begging at the door of a tavern for scraps, more likely to be kicked than fed. 

Just as the thought occurred to him the dog reared back on its hind legs and began to grow, gaining height until it towered over Geralt. The stench of its breath was overpowering, and the fur on its stomach was knotted into thick tufts, stuck together with old blood and piss. 

“Come traveller,” it said, its great muzzle contorting to force out the words.

“Forgive my trespass, Guardian,” Geralt replied, tilting his head in acknowledgement.

The Guardian thudded down onto all fours, making the ground tremble. Its muzzle was now close enough for Geralt to feel the heat of its breath, but he stood his ground. The Guardian regarded him for a moment before snorting. It turned and padded away through the trees, branches bending themselves back as it passed. Geralt took less than a second to decide that he should follow it, and he took off in its wake just as the trees and branches began to snap back into place. 

It was darker here, but once or twice Geralt looked up to see unfamiliar stars wheeling overhead. They walked for a long time, the Guardian keeping up a steady pace. It walked as if the trees in its path simply didn’t exist, and the trees obliged it by fading into insubstantial darkness as they passed. As they travelled further into the forest Geralt tried to imagine what he would say to Emhyr when he saw him, but even here, in the Land of the Dead, it was a meeting that was impossible to imagine. 

Finally a glow appeared in the distance, growing until Geralt was forced to shade his eye against the glare. Like a low winter sun, light poured from between the trees, brighter than anything he’d expected to see in this dead world. The Guardian stopped suddenly, sitting back on its great haunches. 

Geralt stayed where he was, but when the Guardian did nothing else he started to ease past it. When he reached its shoulder it turned its head towards him.

“Pay your price,” it growled.

Geralt nodded, and kept walking towards the light. 

The dark forest faded from close-growing trees into desert like something from a dream. It was furnace-hot and the sand shifted under his feet as he walked. He tugged at the sword straps where they dug into his shoulder, the heat of them making sweat drip down his spine. 

He could not think why he had decided to carry them. He had some skill with a crossbow, but a sword had never been his favoured weapon and yet he carried two of them. He realised that they must be an offering for one of the Guardians and cursed himself for forgetting. It was only the heat and the light making him forgetful, after so long walking in the dark. 

There were mountains in the far distance that never seemed to move closer, but as he walked steadily towards them he pulled up every scrap of knowledge he had gleaned from Sílna and her books to make sure he had forgotten nothing else. _ Wood bends for bravery, but Iron cuts deep, dirt takes what is learned… _ He repeated the rhyme to himself as he walked, and couldn’t help but wonder what had already been taken from him. 

Of all the places to become forgetful, the Sand Gate—Gate of Knowledge—was not one of them, he thought with a little humour. He would tell Emhyr when he saw him, and Emhyr would give him one of his looks: the one that said he was not sure how Geralt was managing to stand upright and breathe at the same time. 

The ground sloped gently upwards, his heavy footfalls pulling energy from him with each step. He tried not to think about food or water, only putting one foot in front of the other. Gradually he became aware that he could hear the sound of water. At first he thought he was hallucinating. It would not have been the first time. Usually though he’d had either too much Black Blood or one to many of Zoltan’s homebrew. 

It wasn’t water: it was sand. He reached the peak of the dune to discover a vast rend in the desert, where the sand fell endlessly with a sound like a thousand snakes slithering on their bellies. Geralt instinctively stepped back from it, from the dark maw that stood between him and the distant mountains. He shaded his eye as he looked in either direction, but the blackness extended as far as he could see. 

_ Come traveller, _ the sand whispered, _ pay your price. _

Geralt looked down, hoping to see some hint that there was an end to the fall, but there was nothing. 

“Forgive my trespass, Guardian,” he murmured, and stepped forward into the swallowing dark.

When he had been planning for the journey he had imagined many situations: some of them fueled by the stories that other travellers had brought back, some by the stories where everyone died horrible deaths that Sílna apparently delighted in telling. It had seemingly not occurred to him during that time that he might need a damned light.

Geralt sat on the ground, his emptied his pack spread around him in the pitch darkness. He was able to identify about half the content by touch: a dagger, a small knot of kindling for a fire, a number of bottles with unknown symbols etched into them, but no flint. He hunted monsters by trade and yet he had bought nothing with which to start a fire. The lack nagged at him. Surely the Gates took something innate, not something physical like flint or a way to spark a flame? He ran his hands over the contents of his pack one more time, coming up with nothing. 

After repacking he stood with his eye closed for endless moments, straining for any sound, any indication of the way he needed to go. He held his breath. Nothing. When he opened his eye though a faint glow had appeared, over to his right. If he looked directly at it, it was almost impossible to discern, but he could make it out from his peripheral vision well enough to pick a direction to walk in. He wondered briefly about all those who had come before him, who didn’t have a Witcher’s eyesight—even if he only had the one eye from which to use it—and decided he’d rather not know. 

If he was right, and he sincerely hoped he was, then he was walking towards the last Gate that stood between him and Emhyr. Despite his best efforts, the image of Emhyr that came to him most often now was of him in his casket: impossibly still. He reached for another memory as he walked, one with a little more light. 

They had played gwent one evening, not so long ago, which had somehow progressed into playing karuta with poetry cards. Emhyr had won, as his ability to remember archaic poetry had been undiminished by the frankly amazing amount of wine they had drunk that night. That had been the last time Geralt had seen him alive, he realised. They had finished their last game and Emhyr had walked with him to the door, where he’d said… something. Geralt didn’t even know why it was so maddening that he could remember: it hadn’t been ‘stay’ and now he could see that that was what he’d most wanted to hear from Emhyr that night. He’d thought they’d have more time.

The Ivory Gate glowed with some inner light. By the time he was close enough to touch it he was almost squinting: the relative brightness to the absolute blackness he had been walking in was overwhelming to his sensitive sight. He tilted his head back where the Gate rose upwards so far that it seemed to go straight up, the curve of its sides lost to the darkness. 

Walking around it revealed nothing. He thought about calling out, but he could just imagine what Vesemir would say at the idea of announcing his presence to an unknown God of Death.

He sat down to wait for the Guardian.

The smell came to him first. He’d once followed a ghoul into a sewer where it had been storing bodies for several months in the height of summer. It had smelled better than this. 

Whatever it was had four feet and was heavy enough that Geralt could feel the faint tremor of the earth as it padded closer. He stood and turned but the glare of the Gate rendered his night vision useless, so he could do nothing but wait until it got closer. 

Finally it came into view: a great sphinx. Her fur and wings were matted with filth, and a necklace of bones hung rattling around her neck. One of her eyes was almost glued shut with puss—the other, bloodshot and wild. 

“Forgive my trespass, Guardian,” Geralt said, his voice ringing out in the stillness.

The Guardian continued towards him until she towered over him, blocking the light of the Gate with her massive body.

“Have you no fear?” She sneered. 

Geralt considered his answer carefully: he didn’t imagine that lying would go well for him.

“I’m afraid of my failure here, when I have come so far. I’m afraid that I haven’t given up enough, that the bargains I’ve made with the Guardians were too small,” He swallowed, “I’m afraid of never seeing my loved ones again.”

“And of me?” She asked, spittle flying from her lips as she did.

“No.”

She lowered herself until she was crouched in front of him; her infected eye smelt of rot and pain.

“Do you dare lie to me, little one?”

Geralt shook his head. “I’ve seen worse things than you that turned out to be fair, and fairer things that were rotten and foul. Those who are monstrous and those who aren’t come in all shapes and sizes, and you can’t tell just by looking at one which is which.”

The sphinx snorted, and Geralt decided to add a little more stupidity to his life. 

“I have a healing ointment,” he said, gesturing, “for your eye.”

“That is not the payment,” she spat.

“And I’ll pay the price, but it must pain you? Would you not accept a gift, freely given?”

She tilted her head a little, but said nothing. Geralt decided that was close enough to acceptance for him, and he sat himself down to unpack again in the light of the Gate. 

“You may as well take the rest,” he said, as he took out the many bottles he carried, “I only know what half of them are for. And the swords: I have no use for them and they’ll make a nice counterpoint to the bones.” He gestured to her necklace.

She pulled them towards her and secreted them away into the dark while Geralt worked on the poultice. It was a simple thing, just a mix of herbs and moss water. She slowly lowered her head for Geralt to put it on her.

“Why have you come here to this terrible place?” She asked as he worked, spreading the ointment over her hot, rough skin.

Geralt shrugged, not even able to justify it to himself. 

“I have to see him again. I have to…” He stopped. “I couldn’t stand to leave him here.”

“What’s your name?” He added, as he smeared on the last of the ointment.

“Izanami.”

“I’m Geralt of Rivia.” 

He stood, lighter without his swords or his potions. 

The Sphinx—Izanami—regarded him for a moment in silence. Geralt could see that the ointment was already starting to work a little, and that she could open her eye more than a slither now. That was something, at least. Even if he failed now, he had accomplished something, here in the Land of the Dead.

“Come, Geralt of Rivia,” she said slowly, “come pay your price.” And with a soft sweep of one great paw she pushed him through the Ivory Gate. 

The land beyond was neither dark not light, hot or cold. There was no sky, and no ground to speak of. A grey mist covered everything, flowing over vague shapes in the distance, pushed by a wind that plucked at Geralt’s hair and clothes. 

He walked towards a clump of trees close by: their outlines limned in mist, but as he got closer he realised he’d been mistaken and in fact it was not trees he could see, but far distant mountains. He turned to his right, scanning for anything he could make sense of, until he saw that he was close to another place where the mist snagged and swirled around some object—perhaps a person—but again as he got closer it faded into the background. 

He stood still then, turning in a careful circle. Shapes pulled themselves into focus as he watched, then faded back into the swirling mist. Figures perhaps, or monsters. Whole cities built themselves and collapsed in the time it took for him to blink, and the wind pulled and pulled at him, as if he too was expected to fade away. 

He tried again, slower this time, looking for some movement that meant he was not alone, that all this had not been for nothing. 

Having found nothing better to do he sat and meditated, concentrating on the almost-sound of the wind. He couldn’t have been a hundred percent sure he wasn’t imagining the sound: nature abhored a vacuum and the mind sometimes heard or saw things that it imagined _ should _ be there—he saw it often enough in the people he rescued. He thought he heard a whispered voice and he was on his feet, dagger in hand, before he’d fully registered it. 

There was nothing: only the ever collapsing shapes in the half light.

He sat down again, emptying himself of thought; of his worries and fears. Gradually, the whispers started again, so far on the edge of hearing that he couldn’t make out words. He could feel the cadence of the words well enough to be able to separate languages: here was Elvish, here was a Dryad dialect, here was Common. He sat for what felt like hours: the words becoming clearer but no closer. Finally, his eye still closed, he slowly got to his feet and began to walk. 

As he moved the voices started to rise and fall around him so that sometimes he caught a phrase or word: _ I forgot to... where did I… did you hear… time… _He walked for so long he wondered how he would ever find the Gate again, but he pushed the thought away, his eye firmly shut and his ears straining. Words jumped more clearly out at him, until he heard a voice he would recognise anywhere. 

_ Geralt? _

Sometimes being a Witcher involved a lot more guesswork that Vesemir would have ever admitted. Despite not being told Geralt was sure that if he opened his eye he would not find Emhyr standing before him—only grey mists and silence.

“Emhyr?” Geralt said, speaking as loudly as he dared.

_ Yes, it is I. _

Geralt breathed out, more relieved than he’d expected to be to hear the Emperor’s voice again.

“Good, you need to come with me: Ciri sent me to get you.”

**Part III**

There was no reply at first, but Geralt kept his eye shut and held his breath.

_ Are you sure it is me you came for? _

Nothing in Emhyr’s voice indicated anything other than a neutral inquiry, but Geralt felt sure he was surprised. 

“Yeah, I’m sure. Ciri sent me.” Geralt repeated. 

If Emhyr hadn’t realised that there was nothing Geralt wouldn’t do for Ciri, then he knew Geralt even less well that he’d thought he did. Apparently looking after your daughter for half an age didn’t mean he’d bothered to learn much about Geralt. 

“Are you coming?” he added, more than a little annoyed.

_ I will follow just behind you. _

With that settled, Geralt turned and headed in the direction he’d come from. Even with nothing resembling features by which to navigate he could find his way back to the spot he’d come through the Gate. Perks of being a Witcher. 

How they were going to get back through the Gate was not something he had a plan for, but there was always the guess and look confident about it approach. 

_ Do you know how to get back through the Gate? _

Geralt cursed—very quietly.

“The same way I came,” he answered, trying not to make it a question. 

Emhyr didn’t reply, and Geralt had half thought to turn to see if he was still following behind, but he ignored the impulse in favour of getting them out of there as quickly as possible. They walked until Geralt started to doubt that he’d remembered the way, and then they were back: one moment he was in endless grey mists, and the next he was plunged into the darkness that surrounded the Ivory Gate.

There was no sign of Izanami, just the vast arch of the Gate itself and its ghostly light. 

“The Ivory Gate,” Emhyr said quietly from beside him, and Geralt turned to find the Emperor as whole and granite-faced as he’d been in life. He wore his funeral clothes: a black tunic and trousers, with a high collar embroidered with gold.

Geralt stared, and almost reached out to confirm he was real before realising how unwelcome that would be.

Emhyr was looking back at him, some emotion on his face that Geralt couldn’t read. 

He shook off the feeling, acknowledging that he was simply glad that he had succeeded in his task. He couldn’t have faced Ciri to tell her that he had failed her: that he had failed to bring back the Emperor as she had requested. He was proud that she had so much faith in him, and he was proud that she had been able to put the needs of her people and her Empire before her concern for Geralt. He knew that Emhyr was worth more to the Empire than he was himself. It must have been a difficult choice to have made, and he was glad that she had not shied away from making it. 

They set out in the dark, Geralt trusting his sense of direction would guide him as it had beyond the Ivory Gate.

“Why don’t you just use a Sign for light?” Emhyr asked, after stumbling a little.

“Use what?” Geralt replied. 

There was a long silence from behind him. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter,” Emhyr eventually replied.

A glow appeared at the edge of his vision, and Geralt put whatever Emhyr knew about what he had lost to one side until they reached the source of it: a silvery rope that stretched away into the dark above them.

“Tell me what you meant,” Geralt demanded, now that he could see Emhyr’s face well enough to guess if he was lying or withholding something.

Emhyr didn’t pretend to misunderstand him at least, explaining what he knew about the Witcher mutations and the strange brand of magic they used, so unlike that of the Sorceresses and Mages. He listened in silence until Emhyr ran out of words, then turned to climb the rope that would take them up, away from the Ivory Gate. 

Geralt pulled himself upwards, fighting to find a handhold among the shifting sand. The second he was somewhat stabilized he turned and offered help to Emhyr, who was heaving himself up and over the lip of the pit. He wanted to make some remark to ease the disquiet of having Emhyr’s hand in his, but he was still trying to fit the idea that he’d been able to control magic into his head. It was like he had taken a wound that he couldn’t feel or see, but the pity in Emhyr’s eyes had been enough to convince him he was telling the truth. 

They got the their feet, Emhyr shading his eyes with his hand as he looked over to the far distant mountains. 

“I sincerely hope we are going the other way,” he commented.

“We are,” Geralt replied, and started down the dune in the opposite direction. 

Geralt tried to tell himself he felt cooler without two swords strapped to his back, but in reality the sun was just as pitiless as it had been the first time. When he glanced at Emhyr out of the corner of his eye he seemed to be suffering no ill effects. Though Geralt thought he still looked a little ghostly, as if he was not quite solid enough to block out the sun. 

They half-slid down dunes and trudged up them, the silence as oppressive as the heat. Emhyr must have been familiar enough with Geralt to know what else had been taken by the Guardians. He would have surely kept tabs on his daughter’s former caretaker and therefore know Geralt’s attendant skills. Geralt went so far as to take a breath to ask the question, but he shut his mouth abruptly. He could not be sure if knowing would negate the sacrifices he’d made, he told himself. It didn’t matter either way in the end, as Emhyr broached the topic not long after.

“Do you know what was taken from you?” he asked, with no preamble. 

“No, but I think you do.”

Geralt let the silence stretch between them, determined not to ask again. 

“Some of it at least,” Emhyr said finally, his attention on where he was putting his feet rather than on Geralt, “your magic, your left eye and I don’t think I have ever seen you without your swords.”

“I had two, but I don’t favour the weapon so I gave them away.”

Emhyr almost stumbled and Geralt caught his arm without thinking.

“Steady,” he said. 

“Thank you,” Emhyr replied, with courtesy that seemed to surprise himself as much as it did Geralt. 

Geralt abruptly let go and continued to the base of the dune. He was certain that they would be able to see the forest from the next one’s apex.

“I could fight with the swords then?” He asked, though the answer was clear enough from Emhyr’s reaction.

“Yes, you were—you were skilled.” 

Geralt wondered at the uncharacteristic hesitation.

He was right about the forest: at the crest of the dune a dark line of trees appeared on the horizon, much closer than Geralt thought they would be. They looked like a mirage, shimmering in the heat.

“Was it worth it?” Emhyr asked, as they started down again.

Geralt shrugged, mostly thinking of the cool forest that awaited them. 

“It must have been.” 

Without the Guardian to guide them the forest was a nightmare of snarled roots and reaching branches. The air was damp, meaning that the occasional dead thicket they stepped threw up more mud than dust, coating them from the waist down with leaves and dirt. Emhyr seemed more alive the further they walked, breathing a little heavier as they negotiated the uneven ground, his funeral shoes about the furthest thing from useful.

They were silent, only communicating in brief gestures: pointing to the best place to step and holding back branches for each other. 

Geralt thought they were about halfway to the sea when Emhyr spoke again.

“I need to rest.”

Geralt looked round at him. He stood a few steps further back than Geralt had thought him to be, a hand on a tree trunk as he leant his weight on it in the half-twilight. Geralt looked around, realising they were only a little way from the place where he had first seen the Guardian. He informed Emhyr of this and they continued on for another hour until they reached the clearing. Emhyr sat heavily on a patch of mostly dry earth, and Geralt folded his legs under him and did the same. 

“Why did you come for me?” Emhyr asked into the quiet.

“I told you, Ciri asked me to.”

“She would never ask you to risk your life in such a way. What purpose would it serve?”

“You’re the Emperor of the North and South, you’re needed.”

“How long have I been dead?”

“Nearly seven months.”

“And is the Empire in chaos? Has a civil war broken out? Famine? An onslaught of monsters?”

Geralt stayed silent, feeling the edges of whatever darkness Emhyr was driving him towards but not sure what the consequences of reaching it would be.

“I see,” Emhyr said, as if Geralt had answered him anyway.

“She asked me to come,” Geralt repeated, stubbornly. It was the truth, after all. He got to his feet and muttered something about walking the perimeter. The conversation was a maddening itch at the back of his mind and he needed to get away from it, if only for a moment. He walked until he felt he could breathe again, until the trees started to thin and the sound of the waves came to him. 

He’d been away too long, had walked too far. He hurried back: the worry worse than whatever strange urge had motivated him to leave Emhyr. He ignored the branches that lashed at him, and paid no mind to where he put his feet. He just had to get back, to make sure that—

The clearing was empty: Emhyr was gone. 

He tried to find Emhyr’s footprints, but all was lost to the mud and mist. He followed the route they had come for a little while. He travelled quickly, quicker than Emhyr would be able to walk by himself, but there was no sign of him.

He risked calling out, his voice oddly flat as the thick forest swallowed up any sound. He called for Emhyr at first, then finally he called for the Guardian of the Dirt Gate. 

A different Guardian answered him. Geralt looked up at the sound of wingbeats, just in time to see Izanami drop beneath the canopy and land in front of him. The trees shook and shivered, dry leaves swirling down to add another layer to the blanket that already covered the forest floor. Branches crowded backwards, away from the sphinx’s bulk as she towered over Geralt, proud and terrible. 

“Izanami?” He couldn’t even begin to guess what had bought the Guardian here, so far from her Gate.

“I ask a favour,” she said, though nothing in her voice indicated asking.

In general, Geralt would have advised against agreeing to favours for Gods of Death, but half his mind was focused on Emhyr, on finding him and convincing him to come back with him so he simply gestured for her to go on.

“You will carry a burden for me, back to the land of the living.”

Geralt looked up sharply at that.

“I have to find Emhyr first.”

“And you will.”

Geralt rubbed a hand over his face, knowing he was going to say yes, but also aware he was reaching the end of what he was capable of. Another burden, on top of the unknown losses that had already suffered, on top of losing Emhyr, on top of not knowing what to say to bring him back.

He nodded.

She regarded him for moment, then stretched out her great wings—trees groaning as they unfurled against the trunks. She beckoned and Geralt stepped under their shadow, the stench of rot thick in his nose. She enclosed him in her darkness, but he made himself stand firm as she curled her tail around his legs. She lifted a great paw, and in the dim light he could make out a small spherical shape, half buried in the earth.

“Eat it,” she said, “and carry it within you back into the world.”

That she had stated her belief that he would return so plainly gave him hope, so he reached down and picked up what he could see was an apple, its skin gleaming softly, and took a bite.

Knowledge surged through him and fell to his knees in the dirt. A terrible burden she had given him: a terrible truth she had returned. 

“Why?” He gasped and meant _ why did you take it? Why did you give it back? _

“Payment,” she said, then she flapped her wings once, twice, and was gone - the forest shaking with her passing. 

After a while Geralt wiped his hand over his eyes and pushed himself to his feet: he had to get to Emhyr. 

Geralt found him on the borderland between the forest and the desert. 

He called out to him and Emhyr turned and took a step towards him, away from the light of the desert. 

“You remembered,” he said, sounding stunned.

“You _ knew _?” Geralt asked. He’d stopped a few feet from Emhyr, unable to fit the idea of Emhyr being aware of his regard into his mind. 

“I knew that Cirilla would never have asked you to come, I knew that you… that you cared for me, and I knew that one must make many sacrifices to reach the place of the dead. It was not an unreasonable assumption that you had lost your reason for coming for me. The question is of course, why have you had it returned? What is sacrificed to the Guardians cannot be restored.”

Geralt gaped at him for a moment, before taking the steps that separated them and pulling Emhyr into his arms. Emhyr went easily, his cheek warm where it rested against Geralt’s own. 

“Never go where I can’t follow you again,” Geralt said.

“Geralt,” Emhyr replied, his tight embrace belying the calm of his voice, “you have followed me past death, what possible place do you speak of?”

Geralt let out something that started as a laugh but the sound was swallowed by the creaking trees overhead, and the echoes sounded like crying. 

“Gods, they took my magic, my swords—I cannot use my swords,” he choked. 

The difference between being told by Emhyr and the true knowledge of what he had lost was stark. Izanami had returned only that which she had taken: his memories of Emhyr—and all the emotions those memories held—but with them had come the awareness of what he had lost. It was like a veil had been pulled back and he could see the scars where his sacrifices had been. He thought of the gnarled skin over his where his eye should be. Scars both real and imagined. 

Emhyr tightened his grip for a moment before pulling back. 

“We should go,” he said. 

The forest was easier after that, as if Izanami had returned not just his memories, but some integral part of himself. 

“If you take me back you will not regain what you have lost,” Emhyr commented. He’d said the same thing four different ways so far, and Geralt grit his teeth. He could hear the waves again, could feel how close they were to escape.

“Even if Sílna and the accounts of people who returned were wrong and it’s possible to regain what one lost, that is not what I am going to do.”

“Geralt—”

“No! No,” He turned to Emhyr, who had set his face in the grim mask that had characterised their earliest encounters, before Ciri, before their friendship.

“Emhyr, do you not want to come back?” He hadn’t asked, hadn’t even thought to until this moment.

“That is not it,” he replied, and Geralt let his shoulders slump in relief.

Emhyr reached out and threaded his hand into the loose ponytail Geralt wore at the back of his neck. With the other he touched the rough scars that covered where his eye had been.

“My one corner of the world was not enough for me,” he continued, stroking his hand down to cup Geralt’s jaw, “and so it follows that one life would not be enough for me: that I would not be content to stay here in this nothingness and forget when I have been offered a way back to the light, to the Empire I have built, to my daughter and all I hold dear.”

He kissed Geralt chastely, and Geralt shut his eye and snarled his own hands into the front of Emhyr’s tunic, wanting him to stay close—wanting him to stay.

“But the cost,” Emhyr said, and dropped his hands to entwine them with Geralt’s. “What of the cost?”

“It’s already paid,” Geralt replied, more sure now it was clear that he wasn’t alone in how he felt. “It’s already paid and I would pay it again. Come back with me.”

Emhyr nodded and they continued walking.

“Although, I will let you be the one to explain to Cirilla what you have done.”

Geralt snorted at the thought, then frowned as he considered it some more.

“Yes, exactly,” Emhyr said.

They ended up building a raft for the sea, as it was clear that the Iron Guardian would not be ferrying them over to the other shore anytime soon. At first Geralt had suggested they swim, but Emhyr’s quelling look had been enough to put paid to that idea. 

More than a dozen times Geralt had reached for a skill that was no longer his, whether a sign for Aard, or his sword to take down thick branches for the oars. Each time he could feel Emhyr tense beside him. Of all the wounds that they would carry from their time here, he half thought that the one caused by Geralt’s sacrifices would weigh heaviest on them. Not because Geralt regretted them—well, he didn’t regret their cause—but because Emhyr did. 

“Do you remember any of this?” Geralt asked as he rowed them across the sea. Emhyr was looking out to where the water merged into the grey horizon.

“No, only pain and then nothing. Your voice brought me back to myself, I think.”

They were quiet after that, Geralt concentrating on getting them safely across. He was working very hard on not thinking about what was in the water. Every so often there would be a soft tug on one oar or the other, as if something was weakly pulling at them. 

The tide was in when they reached the cliffs that enclosed the sea. The sound of falling rocks echoed as vast swathes of the cliffs slid into the waves, only to be replaced by grey rock that pushed out of the earth, thrusting up into the sky to become a hundred meters tall in moments. Decay and rebirth, on a scale that was difficult to comprehend. Even Emhyr was helpless to do anything but watch for a moment, as a great cliff face crumbled into the sea some scant meters from where they stood. 

“I’m assuming there’s a path.” He said, eyes still on the falling rocks.

“Yeah, the middle here seems more stable than the outer edges, and there’s a path that leads out.”

“Out?”

“Yes, we’re close to the last Gate.”

“Geralt—”

Emhyr stopped, as if he could not find the words. 

Geralt kissed him once, and Emhyr gestured for him to go on. The glass shore was slippery, but not so treacherous that Emhyr needed the hand he put on Geralt’s shoulder as they walked. Geralt was grateful for the contact, for the reassurance that Emhyr was really there, walking beside him.

It would have been impossible to find the crevice from which Geralt had gained entrance to the Underworld without Witcher sight, and perhaps it would have been impossible for Geralt with only one eye to rely on had he not already come this way. Emhyr followed him without question, even though to him it must have looked as if Geralt was leading him towards the high, ever-crumbling cliffs.

The noise was all-consuming this close to the rocks. Geralt smelt the path that lead out to the last Gate before he saw it: the damp packed earth that he walked on to get there was different from any smell in the terrible place they were now. He walked until the cliffs were all he could see, aware that if there was a rockfall now there would be no escape. 

Then they were past the rocks, in a narrow tunnel that had seemed only a darker fold in the cliffs until they had stepped inside. The sounds of the shore were suddenly distant, and Geralt thought perhaps he could hear frogs calling to each other in the living forest that was only a few steps away. 

“You go first,” Geralt said, “I’ll follow just behind.”

Emhyr hesitated and Geralt waited for him to give his thoughts a voice.

“You will no longer be a Witcher,” he said, presently.

“And you’ll no longer be an Emperor.”

That seemed to decide him, and he went ahead to the path where Geralt could smell night blooming flowers and the forest, teeming with life. 

Geralt took a breath then followed Emhyr up, into the world. 


	2. Epilogue

**Epilogue **

“You were asleep.”

“I most certainly was not,” Emhyr replied, opened his eyes and attempting to hide a yawn behind a hand.

Geralt grinned at him, and then added a wink just for good measure. Emhyr didn’t roll his eyes but Geralt could see he wanted to. 

He had found Emhyr behind the vineyard, dozing on a bench that marked the boundary between the cultivated land and the wildflowers that ran riot in the next field over. It was Emhyr’s favourite spot, though if asked directly he would have given a lecture on the impossibility of ranking things in order of preference due to the impermanence of the criteria that such objects could be judged by, rather than admit it. 

Geralt loved him so much.

“What are you reading?” he asked, instead of sharing his musings. 

“A treatise on the socio-political effects of crop rotation in Temeria.”

“Wow, I can see why you fell asleep.”

Emhyr sighed, which was one point to Geralt. The first person to sigh on any given day was assigned a point, and the one with the most points was allowed to start with an advantage at gwent the next time they played. Geralt inevitably won the points game by some way, and then was promptly destroyed by Emhyr at gwent. Ciri had suggested that Emhyr was allowing him to win the former so he would not feel so bad at losing the latter, but Geralt thought Ciri was underestimating Geralt’s ability to annoy. 

She’d been so angry with Geralt when he’d returned to the palace with a not-dead Emhyr that Geralt had worried for a long time that he’d genuinely destroyed her trust in him. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of her when he’d decided to risk it all to bring Emhyr back, it was just that such worries had seemed so far away. He could see now how he had very much not in been in a place to be making any kind of major decisions, especially decisions such as _ let’s go to the Land of the Dead to get Emhyr back, because I’ve just realised that I’m in love with him. _ He’d suggested to her that all was well that ended well. 

After being shouted at extensively by Ciri, Geralt had visited Sílna to tell her all he’d learned about the Land of the Dead. But by the time he’d gotten there it had mostly fallen away from him. He remembered what he’d lost, and the beat of great wings, but nothing more. Emhyr had remembered even less, and had said on more than one occasion he would have thought it nothing but a nightmare if he’d not come back to such a different world to the one he’d left. 

They had not even needed to discuss the idea that Emhyr could not reclaim his throne. He had been gone for over seven months and, although a vaguely plausible story had been put forward for his death that wasn’t, it had been clear that retiring into relative obscurity would be best for the Empire. Geralt had worried that it would be a disappointment: to be brought back to a world that had moved on by a Witcher who had lost half his skills. 

_ Cities have lived and died on my command, _ Emhyr had told him when Geralt had mumbled his concerns into his pillow one evening. _ Yet I find myself unable to find the words to explain what your sacrifice has meant to me. I could spend all my remaining days at your side and not regret a moment. _

It had been hard in the beginning; Geralt negotiating around the holes his lost skills had left behind and Emhyr dealing with a guilt he would never admit to. They hadn’t known how to be together, how to share each other’s space. They were both unbending in their own ways and learning to compromise had taken a long time. It was still something they struggled with, if Geralt was being honest. Even now they fought occasionally: at first most fights had been over Emhyr’s inability to admit to having emotions. He had accused Geralt of hypocrisy, early on, as Geralt never mentioned an injury or nightmare. He was a Witcher though, and measured horror and pain on a different scale to most. 

Geralt shared them with Emhyr now, even when he felt he himself had been unaffected by them. Emhyr had reciprocated by giving Geralt a terse recital of any nightmare he had suffered, first from across breakfast while looking anywhere but at Geralt; then much much later, from within the circle of his arms. Now most of their fights were carried out in a shorthand of gestures and looks over the heads of their grandchildren: Geralt tried to give them cake, a dagger, or anything remotely resembling fun, and Emhyr tried to read to them from some dusty book on statecraft. Geralt had a horrible feeling that Ciri thought they were cute. 

The Guardians had not taken Geralt’s Witcher-lifespan, and Emhyr’s Elder Blood held true—though his hair was whiter than Geralt’s. They made love most days, comfortable with each other and their pleasure after decades together. Very occasionally one or the other of them—usually Emhyr—would wake in the night from some nightmare and pull the other down to fuck him hard, but more often it was lazy and slow between them, morning light blurring the edges of the world. 

Geralt came back to himself with a start, wondering where his mind had gone for a moment. He was getting old. He caught Emhyr turning back to his book out of the corner of his eye and grinned. After all this time, his first instinct was still to hide his affections. Geralt reached over and put his hand under Emhyr’s where it lay on his thigh, and Emhyr laced their fingers together. 

“Shall we walk back?” Geralt asked.

“You go ahead and ask Marlene to make us some supper. I will finish this chapter first.”

“You’ll be just behind me?” Geralt asked, the echo of his words casting a sudden shadow in the early evening light. Emhyr pulled Geralt towards him for a kiss and it was gone.

“Yes,” Emhyr replied, kissing him again, “I will follow just behind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [7elion](https://7elion.tumblr.com/) drew [Izanami!!!!](https://xpityx.tumblr.com/post/619544923640938496/yeeeeeeeeeeeep-look-a-character-from-my-fic-im)
> 
> I can be found on [Tumblr](https://xpityx.tumblr.com), but if you're just looking for writing updates then I use my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/xpityxfanfic) for those.
> 
> **UPDATE Nov 2020**: There is now a (half an hour long!!) review/discussion of this fic on the podcast Fic Clique: [you can find links to the episode here](https://xpityx.tumblr.com/post/628449403675475968/episode-14-we-do-not-condone-these-imperialist).


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